As Balboa Park prepares for the centennial of the 1915 exposition, its cultural institutions take steps toward a more cohesive experience

“My hope is during 2015, and following 2015, it will be seen as a destination and marketing will help drive people here and kind of bring life to the park.”

Telling the park’s story

With roughly 14 million visitors a year — according to Balboa Park Central, the park entity that operates the visitors’ center and is responsible for the park’s marketing — the park isn’t exactly a dead zone. And approximately half of those visitors attend a performance or go to a museum.

“Although we have a high visitation (figure), we have a tremendous story that really hasn’t been fully shared,” Simpson said. “People tend to come for one or two places and then tend to wander. They don’t always even know what else is available to them here. So how can we make that more apparent?”

While the centennial committee is quietly approaching potential donors and sponsors to underwrite a series of high-profile events that could transform El Prado into something resembling a digitally enhanced Disneyland Electrical Parade, the park’s institutions are assembling their own exhibitions, some with the help of $325,000 in grants from the committee.

“For museums, we generally plan two years in advance, sometimes three,” said Deborah Klochko, the director of the Museum of Photographic Arts and the president of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership. “So planning the right kind of exhibition for 2015 as a citywide celebration is trying to be formed is an interesting opportunity, especially when we look at 2015 as not just a single-year celebration, but an opportunity to really present the park and ‘the Balboa Park experience.’

“We want people to have a good experience and come back. So we want to make sure there’s real quality in our exhibitions.”

The Centennial Celebration’s CEO, Mike McDowell, expects those institutional efforts to form the core of the yearlong centennial fete.

“We anticipate they will provide 365 days of programming and activities for our visitors,” McDowell said. “And it is from that core set of programming that we will build the rest of the celebration.”

McDowell compared the event to a series of concentric circles, with the institutions at the center. “Then think about the next circle as things we’ll present in the park (in the open spaces),” he said. “The next circle is things we will present in the neighborhoods, the next circle is moving out into our regional assets … .”

While all those circles will require outside funding, as much as $50 million, the core projects are largely being done under the umbrella of each institution’s exhibition budget (the planning grants not withstanding), even if the exhibitions are likely to be on a larger scale given the centennial.

“I’ve been sitting on that 2015 planning committee for the park for five years, and from the beginning we’ve talked about legacy projects,” said Charlotte Cagan, the director of the San Diego History Center, which will create a major, permanent exhibition related to innovation, which is the theme of the centennial, dubbed “EDGE2015.” “We inherited the legacy from 1915; we’re in it. And we want to leave a legacy for the next 100 years the way they did for us.